Six
He would be in the Escher room. Sarah caught her breath as she entered … no matter how dire the circumstance, the sight would forever amaze her.
He was standing by a window on the far side of the room, upside down, staring out over the darkened plain. There were no stars. He heard Sarah enter, and turned to face her expectantly.
"I want to know what you want," she said. " I want to know why you know so much about me. I demand to know what is going on."
"Demand, you say?"
"Yes. Demand. We've been through the power issue, Jareth. You can't intimidate me any more. So you'd better tell me what I want to know."
"Or?"
"Or I will defeat you as I did the last time. Which I did do."
"And how will you do that, pray?"
She bluffed admirably. "You don't want to find out."
He chuckled. "Very well then, my dear. I will tell you what you want to know. No, better: I will show you."
She had never really thought he would hurt her. As a result, when Jareth unleashed his full powers upon her, Sarah was badly unprepared.
The shock knocked her several feet through the air and to the ground. Suddenly, voices raged through her mind, and thoughts that were not her own pounded at her skull. A babble of ideas rushed at her from every side, oppressing her. The voices screamed obscenities and gabbled nonsense and cried for help in pure, cold fear. She struggled under the onslaught, hands to her head, her body aching as she laboriously rose to her feet and struggled to speak.
"Coward," Sarah spat, carefully, toward the distant window. "So, you fall back on your tricks!"
"These are not tricks, my dear," she heard him drawl, through the swirl; he suddenly stood right in front of her. "This is myself. This is truth. I am everywhere, everything here. The Labyrinth is me." His voice dripped with sarcastic disappointment. "Apparently you are simply not as equipped to handle the truth as you believed yourself to be."
GO HOME! PLAY WITH YOUR TOYS, YOUR COSTUMES! The voices screamed.
And above it all, Jareth's voice:
such a pity …
No! Desperation rose up in her at his tone of dismissal. She lashed out and caught his arm, breathing hard with rage and pain. "This … is … not … the end!"
Jareth looked down at her hand, surprise in his expression. And something else. Satisfaction. As her fingernails dug into his flesh, he dared her to stop him. And she had seen it before.
Just there … an elegant figure, stepping in and out of her sight as she chased him across the ballroom. Grinning with pride and pleasure in his own game.
As she … chased him …
Something clicked into place. Instantly she dropped his arm. His eyes narrowed. The voices screamed his thoughts.
I CAN BE CRUEL … I HAVE BEEN GENEROUS, UP TILL NOW, BUT I CAN BE CRUEL ...
"This is your game, isn't it?" she gasped. "It isn't enough to have the challenge. You have to win it. Destroy your opponent."
No stars to the west.
It looks just like a black hole in the sky.
Waiting … for something to wander into it …
"My dear Sarah, you are delirious."
"Shut the hell up!" she screamed. "I refuse to listen to your lies any longer. This whole thing, this whole place, you, it's all just a trap! To feed your glorious, insatiable hunger, for … for what?! Power? Lust? Do you even know?"
He seemed as tall as a mountain on a vast, starry plain. "You dare to say such things, when everything I have done, everything this place is, has been done for you?"
His glare was fierce. The echoes of his remembered words rebounded in her skull. TURNED THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN … I HAVE TURNED THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN AND I HAVE DONE IT ALL FOR YOU … FOR YOU!
and I am exhausted …
Sarah grimaced with the strain. "The Labyrinth conforms to my wishes because that is the … nature of your trap. This place is built on desires, all right … yours."
"You do not know what you are saying."
"Don't I?"
"It hurts me to pain you, Sarah …"
"Like … hell it does!"
"But you refuse to see me. I made this for you! It is all for you. I found out what you wanted, and I made it!"
" … a trap …"
"No! It is a haven, a beautiful place! Is it not what you wanted?"
"It is a lie!"
Sarah hurtled through empty space. He had lashed out at her with his magic, throwing her several yards across the room and nearly tumbling her off her current plane into the deadly limbo of the center of the hall. She lunged out and caught the edge of a staircase that led sideways, arresting her flight with a violent lurch, and dragged herself onto the landing to a more secure position. Somehow, she was still on the same level as Jareth.
But the Goblin King did not even realize what he had done. She had never heard him so enraged. "What more can I give you, Sarah? What more can you ask that I have not done?" She opened her mouth, but he was not listening. "What more do you want? All I wanted was for you to stay here, with me!"
Through the pain, Sarah stared at this man before her, even now still a tall, black apparition of power and sensuality. But the long pale hair swirled about a thin, drawn face; his skin was flushed, his veins crimson. He loomed over her, hard and menacing, and she expected at any moment the blow that would take her life. She saw him struggle, saw the great forearms and long, thin fingers flex as he gripped them into fists.
He was still holding the dream crystal. Under the force of his grip, it shattered into a thousand pieces.
The shards vanished into the air instantly, like fragments of a harmless soap bubble. But jagged rents sprang from his palm, and dark red blood began to flow down his wrist. He paid it no heed, letting it drip from his upraised fist to the cold stone floor. He did not remove his eyes from her face.
She felt the blood on her own fingers even before she looked down to see it.
Wait. He knows everything.
But how does he know?
Jareth's eyes were no longer in shadow. But in a jolt of terror she wished they were … for they were completely, utterly dead. And they were fixed, resolutely, upon her own. And finally she understood.
You are no longer a child. You have learned that to have happiness, you can't simply assume it will come to you and stay forever. If ever you are fortunate enough to come across it, you must grab on to it, and never let it out of your grasp.
The ball was finally over; the masks had been removed.
"Then it was not revenge you wanted." Sarah was calmer now; the rage had turned to ice, coursing through her body, freezing her from the inside out. She rose, fixing him with a resolute stare, and the babbling voices began to dull slightly. "How long have you been feeding off me?"
He was visibly struggling to regain his composure. The blood was gone, as if it had never been, but his cold sneer seemed forced. "Such crude imagery."
"It is apparently true. How long, Jareth? How long does it take to get your powers back?"
"Sarah …"
"Hoggle, and Ludo, and everybody … they were the first to go, weren't they? A drain on your abilities, a risk that had proved too dangerous in the past?"
"It is not like …"
"For God's sake, would you just answer one question I ask!"
Jareth's face was ashen, his voice growing frantic. "I granted every wish you asked of me …"
"At quite a price."
"I don't offer that to just anyone!"
The voices escalated to a shriek. Sarah gripped her head. ANY ONE NO ONE I MOVE THE STARS FOR NO ONE NO ONE NO STARS NO STARS IN THE WEST...
Jareth's voice was also a shriek, its cultured smoothness shattered and distorted. "I did everything you wanted! I was everything you desired!"
With a herculean effort she burst through his litany. "You used me!"
"I loved you!" he screamed, and his voice was terrible to hear. "I loved you, and you rejected me!"
"You loved me enough to take away everyone that I loved, even to murder them … damn you, you bastard! Just so you would be the only one I had left. Just to break me, so I would come running to you when you called! Then you could control me, possess me, rule me!"
Her voice was a now as dangerous and determined as a flame. "You destroyed my life to make yourself whole again. That is not love. You can't love! You don't know what it means! Your Labyrinth … and you … are nothing but a false … cheap … illusion!"
Jareth's voice became an unimaginable shriek. Somewhere within it was her name. Voices and music and visions ripped through her mind. It was almost beautiful in its sheer chaos. But she felt only …
… pity.
She was the Unknown.
You really don't understand, do you?
I WILL BE YOUR SLAVE … JUST FEAR ME! LOVE ME! LOVE ME, DAMN YOU!
FEAR ME!
love me …
She fought through the distraction, the pain, the beauty, the longing, the magic.
She spoke the question that would answer everything.
"Who are you really?"
There was just one voice in her mind, distant as though welling up through worlds of space and time.
Darkness cannot love light. A cruel paradox. They cannot be separated … yet they cannot be one, for then neither would be anything at all. Every night has a day, but there is always a morning, an evening, a moment where one must die so that the other might be born.
I, my dearest, am the lie that coveted the truth. Desired the truth, and tried to deceive it. But it cannot be. You have discovered me, and I cannot live within you...
So it is morning, and it is time for me to die.